Marilyn J. Taylor is New Chairman of ULI
Published: 2005-07-05 | Article Views: 1918

Internationally acclaimed architect and urban designer Marilyn Jordan Taylor, partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) LLP, is the new chairman of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a non-profit research and education institute dedicated to responsible land use.

WASHINGTON (New Urban Observer) July 5, 2005 - Internationally acclaimed architect and urban designer Marilyn Jordan Taylor, partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) LLP, is the new chairman of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a non-profit research and education institute dedicated to responsible land use. Established in 1936, ULI has more than 26,000 members based in nearly 100 countries and representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines.

A passionate advocate of urbanity and the public realm, Taylor has worked around the world to realize master plans and create distinctive urban places. Her practice at SOM encompasses projects in urban design and transportation. "The movement of people—as pedestrians, as transit riders, as traders, as travelers—was the underpinning of many of the world's great cities and is essential to the vitality and success of great cities today," Taylor said. "We must design from an understanding of movement, at all speeds and scales." In New York City, her home base, Taylor leads the firm’s involvement in major planning projects for the Pennsylvania Station/Moynihan Station redevelopment, JFK and Newark Airports, the New York City Transit Authority, Memorial Sloan Kettering, the East River Con Ed sites, the Downtown Alliance, neighborhood developments in Queens and Hoboken, and Columbia University.

Her experience also includes more than 25 years of international projects, stretching from Singapore and China, to the Middle East, to France and the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. "The point of travel is the exchange of ideas," Taylor said. "There is something wonderful to learn about solving urban problems and celebrating the human spirit wherever you go."

Taylor is well known for her commitment to civic engagement. She has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture (AIA), chairman of the Asia’s national Regional and Urban Design Committee, and chairman of the New York Building Congress. She serves on the boards of the New York Building Congress, the Institute for Urban Design, the Downtown Alliance, and on advisory boards for NYC 2012, the City Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Fellows Committee of the Partnership for New York City. She was a founder of New York New Visions, organized in 2001 to bring the design community together in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan. In 1995 she was selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow of the New York City Partnership, spending a year studying the city's public policy issues and strategies. "Architects and other land use professionals have an obligation to be engaged in the major issues facing their communities," Taylor said.

A focus on cities—their shared issues, their individual strategies to solve them—will be a key priority for ULI during Taylor's term as chairman. At the ULI’s inaugural World Cities Forum, held in London last month, Taylor convened a panel of the world's leading architects, including Lord Norman Foster, director, Foster and Partners in London; A. Eugene Kohn, founder and chairman, Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC in New York City; Jean Nouvel, partner, Ateliers Jean Nouvel in Paris; and Paul Finch, deputy chair of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in London and editor of the Architectural Review, to discuss the challenges and opportunities in city design. Their comments underscored the critical function of the public realm as a uniting feature for cities, an element more important than a dazzling array of individual buildings and icons. The panel also discussed the role of urban infrastructure, which must be designed in a way that fosters an atmosphere of inclusivity, giving all residents a sense of ownership and a shared stake in their cities. “As cities are created and reshaped by economics, politics, geography and culture, we must create linkages among dense communities, provision of public space, and preservation of essential natural resources. Only by addressing these issues together can we envision a sustainable—and humanistic—future,” Taylor said.

A second ULI priority under Taylor's leadership will be to create a heightened awareness of infrastructure—the systems of transportation, utilities, communication, open space, safety and security essential to communities around the world—and to explore new forms of infrastructure financing. Last spring, Taylor participated in a forum hosted by ULI to study the creation of a national entity to provide cities and urban regions with financing, perhaps in the form of seed capital, which could be leveraged to fund various types of infrastructure. Forum attendees pointed to the deterioration of infrastructure in many U.S. cities, both those that are growing and those that are shrinking, noting that this is causing significant difficulties in developing and redeveloping infill projects, and is inhibiting economic opportunity and revitalization. “The purpose (of a new entity) would be (to enable cities) to shorten the time it takes to get money for infrastructure, and to more effectively leverage this funding into more investment,” Taylor said.

A third priority for Taylor is to expand ULI’s land use and real estate communications program, incorporating a dialog of global exchange among ULI'S increasingly international membership. To support this work, ULI will inaugurate two regional enterprises: the Centre for Regeneration and Sustainability in Europe, which will serve ULI’s expanding European presence; and the Center for the West in the United States, which will address regional and interstate issues in the western states. The work resulting from these research enterprises will contribute to the Institute’s reputation as a trusted source and as a convener of members and others committed to the intelligent use of limited land resources, Taylor noted.

A ULI trustee, Taylor has been a ULI member since 1988, and has a long history of involvement in the Institute, most recently serving as the chair of the policy and practice committee. She has twice chaired the Larson Land Use Forum and has served on advisory service panels for the Institute; in 2004, Taylor was a member of an international “blue-ribbon team” of urban design experts convened by ULI to advise the city of Washington, D.C. on the best way to revitalize its Anacostia waterfront. For the past two years, she has served as a jury member for the ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, in which teams of university students compete to create a winning scheme for the redevelopment of an urban site.

“Marilyn has made invaluable contributions to the Institute. We are thrilled to have her as our new chairman,” said ULI President Richard M. Rosan. “She is a brilliant urban designer and architect who welcomes a challenge. As chairman, her insights will make ULI more effective and more relevant in communities worldwide.”

Taylor joined SOM in 1971 and was elected partner in 1987. She served on the firm's executive committee from 1990 to 2004, and was elected the firm's first woman Chairman. Her first several years in the firm were spent in the Washington, D.C., office, where she participated in a number of urban design and planning projects. From 1978 to 1985, Taylor served as SOM’s director of design for the Stations Program of the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, a $250 million federally-funded investment in intercity rail stations between Washington, D.C. and Boston. In 1985, Taylor moved to New York to lead an expanded urban design and planning practice within SOM. She established and leads SOM Airports and Transportation. In addition to winning numerous urban design awards, Taylor has twice been named to Crain's list of Most Influential Women in New York, as well as to the New York Post's "Fab Fifty." She has been honored by New York CREW (as 1998 Woman of the Year), Community Board 1, the New York Womens Agenda, the Building Congress, SMPS, and the AIA. Taylor was educated at Radcliffe College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley. She has served as visiting studio head at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The Urban Land Institute (www.uli.org) is a nonprofit education and research institute supported by its members. The mission of ULI is to provide responsible leadership in the use of land in order to enhance the total environment.

For more information, contact Trisha Riggs at 202/624-7086; E-mail: priggs@uli.org

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